The great unknown is a harsh variable
by glassesgurls
Summary: A woman dies in one world only to be reborn into a world of pirate kings and dreams of the sea. It would be nice to say that the woman knew of the world she went to, but that would be impossible when she comes from a reality none of you would be familiar with. (Alternatively, a woman from an unknown fictional world is reborn into One Piece.) Rating may change.


Chapter 1

She hadn't believed in God in her last life, though not through lack of trying. So badly had she wanted to believe in a God, in an afterlife, but evidence of such had never made itself known to her. All she knew about life was that it was unfair, biting and chewing and annihilating everything good and hopeful until only rags remained. Weak people would fight over those rags, and those people would get tired and then find those more stupid or helpless to fight for them.

She had been of the latter breed. Life had let her alone until her powers had come and the soldiers had come and orders had come and Maverick-

No, Maverick had been a good thing. That's probably why he had gone.

He'd been dead since she was twenty, and she was going on forty. Half her life, he had been gone and she still clung to him like a drowning man to breath. She had only known him for three years. Just three. Three good years she could look back on and remind herself of when Thyra, Axel, and her children died. Whenever she wanted it all to end, whenever she grew tired of waiting, Maverick's voice told her to wait longer. She'd remember his eyes, blue-green and always giving him away. Or his hair, how the soft, white strands were meticulous in arrangement but all the same effortless.

He should have lived, taken care of their children, kept them safe. They wouldn't have hated her if she hadn't given them the time to. Would they hate her now, she wondered? Would she even have a place to go after this? Did anyone?

Quiet, death is so quiet and cool. She wouldn't have minded it if she could have just kept the quiet. Life was full of sad noises, crying, dying, laughing because laughter was always painful when you were hurting. She wouldn't miss it, but she would miss what she'd lost in it.

Life had a cruel texture. It had taken everything. Now, in the blissful silence, when she hadn't thought she had more to lose, she lost even more.

She lost the quiet of death.

-:-

Mirai; it meant future and it was the name the dying woman had given the small body she was placed in. The man called her that as well, the crack and creak in his voice she knew well as the sounds of grief. She could sympathize to a degree, though the man was weak and spineless and could only look at his infant daughter (at her) with hatred and spite. He was the epitome of all she had feared herself becoming in her last life and that fear led to a mutual agreement between father and child; I will have nothing to do with you.

That vow was broken from time to time, as she was still a baby and the man wasn't cold-hearted to his daughter's needs, but it was in place as long as she was clean and fed. Truth be told, if she didn't have the memories of words and their context from her last life, the girl wouldn't have learnt to speak at all. The man never spoke a word to her, only muttered in anguish and pain.

Sometimes, when left alone in her crib to watch the sunlight catch the pretty glass baubles of her mobile, she couldn't help but wonder if this is what she would have been if Thyra had died at the same time as Maverick and she was left to raise her children alone. Those thoughts rarely gained much headway, though, as she could remember the way she clung to her children and devoted herself entirely to them for some trace of their father. They became her world, why she lived with purpose. The twins were all she had to remind her that she couldn't die, as those defenseless boys needed her. Without them, with just Thyra, she would have died long before she had.

She could not find it in herself to understand the man's actions toward her.

-:-

The man kept their agreement to leave each other be until she was three. That's about the age he started hitting her.

Deep down, she knew it was the way she acted that had sent him over the edge. She wasn't a baby, she was a soldier of over two decades and had lived to be a woman in her forties. The result was that she was off in many fundamental ways, despite her best efforts. Her emotions were too complex, actions with too much explicit purpose, words too adult. It was likely that she would've had a few more years of peace if she wasn't how she had been when she died, heartbroken and sullen, and was how she had been when she had first met Maverick.

She had been lazy and childish then, with a sense of humor and a well-hidden heart of an adventurer. Quick to smile, quick to anger, and always willing to let things go.

Now she was barely half of that girl. The sense of humor and adventure had died in battle and the laziness and childishness were thrown out of the window in lieu of surviving another day. Letting things go had turned into pushing them down to deal with later, even though "later" never came. She was still quick to smile, but they were strained to the point of being mockeries.

The anger was ever present.

As the anger grew, she lost all pretense of acting like a child and soon the man thought her a demon. In all likelihood, he'd come to this conclusion to justify his maltreatment of her and assuage his guilt. A demon had killed his wife in childbirth, not a little girl with no control over the situation. She was a cold, inhuman monster in his eyes; filled with ice, drenched in her mother's blood. (And the blood of Maverick, the twins, Axel, Thyra. But that was what she saw when she looked in the mirror, not what her father saw when he gazed upon his daughter.)

Bitterness was quick to consume what was left of her and hate tainted her view of things where sorrow previously had. Just like before, life ate away what rags she had retained. The memories of what good she'd had were wiped away as the pain filled in the gap. The faces of those she loved became dull until all she had were their names and coloration. Teal eyes, white hair. Two redheads with their father's eyes. Dirty blonde with green. Messy black and blue.

She hated the world she had before, for it took them away. She hated the world now because it gave her nothing, not even the strength to take. She hated herself, because everything, when brought down to its simplest form, was intrinsically her fault.

Her skin broke under a boot; she was weak. A sob wracked through her unbidden; she was pathetic. Their voices fade; she wanted them back. The man would glare down at her; she deserved to die.

-:-

At around the age of four, a concerned neighbor came to check on the man. The old woman instead found her, sitting in the corner and wrapping bandages around a broken wrist while a veritable quilt of gauze and plasters covered her arms, legs, and face. The woman, kind-hearted and horrified at the sight, was quick to tell her sweet words and asked probing questions that were all answer with succinct, often monosyllabic, answers.

The marines, part of this life's governing body, arrived on the scene and took her father away. The old woman, whose arms she hadn't left since she'd been found, fought to be let keep her but it turned out that her father had once been a marine and they had a special program to put the "orphaned" children of their own. She left without much complaint, the feeling of being ordered by a military branch ingrained into her and oddly welcome.

For the first time since entering this life, normalcy crept around her.


End file.
